


A glamour, of sorts

by Fabulae



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Author has issues, M/M, Not Beta Read, english not first language, sad lonely prince behind glass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 12:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5967922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabulae/pseuds/Fabulae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the walls we erect are metaphorical only to us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A glamour, of sorts

It was lonely, most days.  
There was a fine line of ice shutting down the world around him. He didn't put it there, it just sort of grew around him, slowly.

It acted as a glamour, of sorts.

The glass had a life of its own, it showed his fine intelligence, his cunning brain, his sharp wit. His warm irony, feelings, and dancing eyes always stayed behind it, keeping him warm. He was afraid if the glass shattered all of those rivulets of humanity still pushing their way through his body would leave him, cold and lifeless.

Sitting down at his desk, or entertaining the nobles, the glamour was always there, and the silence was deafening behind it, his whole body against it was numb and his soul was on fire; he yearned for the ability to lie to himself, to convince his mind not to feel, but it was a feat he still had to accomplish.

Then one day, there came him. He remembered those days before his name became the name of the hand that killed his brother. He remembered the first time he heard:

 _Damianos_ , prince killer, he killed your brother.

He repeated it to himself every night.

It was a litany of revenge, a drive to kill to lessen the pain.

Everytime he uttered his name and vowed to put it on a grave, a sliver of glass would envelope a piece of his body, shielding his heart.

That day he banged so hard on the glass, it cracked. But it stayed put. No fracture giving way to the world outside.

That day he scratched that glass with his short fingernails. He wondered what the glass was showing on its external, on its outbound side, because inside there was just a broken boy that felt the loneliest in the world.

Day by day Laurent would draw the map of his revenge on that glass, he would draw the contours of Damen’s body on it, learning his soft spots, where to hit. He came to know that body so well he could draw the lines with his eyes closed. Every day, he would do it, sometimes absentmindedly, sometimes burdened with glorious purpose: practise made perfect.

Sometimes he would catch his brother’s killer looking at him with his big, kind eyes, and Laurent would wonder if he could see the glass; if he could see him through the glass. If he caught himself at it, he would fast smudge the contours of his slave’s body out of his glass armour, out of his face, out of his eyes, for this man might as well have found a way through the icy slivers of numb he had put between himself and the world; could he allow that?

Damianos could see him, Damianos wanted to touch him, not the glass, _him_. One day he extended a hand and the glass trembled, and it thinned. And a crack opened.

Emotions flurried around, but against Laurent’s most pessimistic accounts, they stayed there. He still felt those last little shreds of humanity, and he felt them stirring, taking new shapes, claiming all of his attention.

He had never wanted to keep of all that in. He had never wanted to be the ice queen. Who would want to be the ice queen?  
And then his brother’s killer saved him. And he came back to save him. And one time someone harmed him and his brother’s killer had a look of pure death on his face. And he was a warrior and he went to war, for him. He had seen through that glass and claimed the lonely human that inhabited the icy fortress for himself.

His brother’s killer was also his saviour, his friend, his captain. He was his, in ways Laurent had trouble understanding, he needed clarity, he need breathing space, thinking space; he needed the glass to go.

One day Laurent nudged at and it crumbled down into tiny little shards, fragments. They were so cold, but so weak; he bundled them up and used them on the wounds of his warrior, to ease his pain.

His warrior stared at them, the lines of his own body clear, his eyes well signaled, easy to find. His warrior said nothing. He also had a armour around him and it would take quite some time more for him to understand those etchings, on that once thick fortress of ice that had protected him, had been carved out of the shape of the same person that evoked the need for a glamour. Laurent’s hands still felt the pain of those drawings, he would keep the scars with him forever; of loving his own torturer, of finding out the one you vowed to kill is the one that could see through you and make you warm again.


End file.
